How to Become Smarter (43 page)

This concludes the four steps of a writing project: 1) planning, 2) research, 3) adjustment of plans, and 4) typing. It is possible that the size of your writing task is small (1-2 pages) and you cannot choose the topic of the text, i.e. you received a concrete assignment. In this case you can omit Steps 1 and 3.

Now that we are done with all steps of a writing project, it is time to discuss writer’s block. We can define writer’s block as an inability to produce a single line of text for several days, several weeks or longer, even though it is important that you write at least something. In my experience, there are two types of writer’s block. The first type is the result of a lack of ideas or stale imagination. If you run into this problem, Step One of a writing project described above can increase your creativity and help you resolve this issue. Although not mentioned in the creativity regimen, physical exercise also helps to come up with writing ideas, despite the fatigue. I play tennis with my trainer once a week and I’ve noticed that the best ideas come to me the next day after a bout of exercise, when I feel tired. The best exercise is game or team sports because they are fun and you don’t have to force yourself to participate on a regular basis. In my experience, other types of exercise are a drain on your self-control, and you have no will power left for compliance with diets.

The second type of writer’s block is the result of a lack of will power (inability to force oneself to start writing), even though you know what to write. We can diagnose this as procrastination. If your mood is normal or elevated, then the depressant diet (
Chapter Four
and
Appendix II
) and a hot environment (
Chapter Two
) can help you to start writing. (Fatigue induced by intensive physical exercise also helps.) The method of increasing detail can also help you overcome procrastination because it allows you to start with the easiest things. The difficulty of tasks builds up as you become more involved in your writing project. Getting started on typing is the most difficult part of a writing project. It is only logical that you should make this step as easy as possible by starting with the easiest tasks.

In conclusion, you can take a look at my own writing achievements (
Appendix VI
), as evidence that the above method is effective. I started experimenting with high-protein diets and other “smart diets” around 1993. Since 1997, when I started full-time academic research, I have contributed to a total of 16 scientific publications (13 PubMed citations and 3 book chapters). Of these 16, I did most of the writing in 7 publications and all of the writing in another 7. It is difficult to say if this performance is above or below average. The amount of data per publication and average frequency of publications vary among different scientific fields [
501
]. Writing performance is not the only factor that determines the amount of scientific publications. I also wrote one book (the one you are reading), a doctoral dissertation, and several articles not related to science.

• A typical writing project includes four steps: 1) brainstorming/planning, 2) reading on the subject, 3) adjustment of the plan and setting up a schedule, and 4) typing up the text according to the plan and schedule.
  
• For small writing assignments, you can omit Steps One and Three.
  
• The method of increasing detail facilitates writing of large texts. It consists of writing the main title and titles of the sections, then the main summary. After that, you write a summary of each section and then expand those summaries.
  
• If the cause of writer’s block is excessive procrastination, the depressant diet and especially consumption of large amounts of fried or broiled meat (and some junk food) are helpful. A hot environment and physical exercise-induced fatigue are useful too.
  
• If the cause of writer’s block is a lack of ideas (you don’t know what to write about), then the creativity regimen from Chapter Four will be helpful.
  
• Physical exercise also helps to come up with ideas, despite the fatigue.
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Reading and writing tasks require different mental abilities. Yet the common obstacle is procrastination: postponing the reading or writing tasks until the last day. Several studies suggest that procrastination correlates with impulsivity and low self-control. Procrastination also inversely correlates with anxiety about a task. People with elevated mood are less productive than people with normal or somewhat low mood, which may be due to the correlation of procrastination with positive mood. The depressant diet from Chapter Four lowers mood and increases emotional tension and is effective at reducing academic procrastination.

Both reading and writing tasks require low procrastination and good mental concentration (attention control). But reading tasks also require good mental clarity, or the ability to understand complex concepts. Chapter One explained why elimination of junk food and food additives from the diet can improve brain function—in particular, fluid intelligence. The modified high-protein diet from Chapter Three improves mental clarity and reading comprehension.

The typing process does not require intellectual brilliance. But job- or school-related writing tasks are among the most difficult types of work according to polls. Based on my experience, the most productive writing happens when mood is slightly anxious or lowered and attention control is at a good level. The depressant diet is conducive to this mental state. A hot environment is also useful. Coming up with writing ideas requires a different approach. The creativity regimen from Chapter Four is helpful.

The method of increasing detail is helpful for both reading and writing tasks. In the case of a reading task, you read the main title and all titles of the chapters within the text. After that, you read the main summary, then the summary of each chapter, and the whole text from start to finish. If summaries are unavailable, reading either the first or last sentence in each paragraph is useful. With writing tasks, you can employ a similar approach, which consists of advancing from easy to more difficult parts of a project.
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CHAPTER 6: Social intelligence

In 1920, psychologist Edward Thorndike hypothesized the existence of a separate type of intelligence responsible for interpersonal interactions. He defined social intelligence as “the ability to understand and manage men and women, boys and girls, to act wisely in human relations.” Social intelligence is different from the personality trait of extraversion. For example, it is possible to be sociable but unwise in relations with other people. On the other hand, a person can be an introvert and have no difficulty managing and interacting with people.

Although the theoretical concept has existed for almost a century, practical evidence of social intelligence is only beginning to emerge. Initial attempts to measure and validate the existence of social intelligence were unsuccessful and different tests of social intelligence did not correlate well among each other. Many of these tests were based on self-rated questionnaires, other-rated questionnaires, or performance tests. The latter are the type of a test that assesses mental abilities objectively. In the case of social intelligence research, performance tests consisted of written questions describing various social situations and questions about a series of cartoons. The numerical scores resulting from the above tests correlated with personality traits and components of academic intelligence. These data led the researchers to conclude that social intelligence did not exist as an independent and unique set of mental abilities. Until recently, many researchers believed that social intelligence is a manifestation of certain personality traits and known mental abilities from academic intelligence.

Research in the past decade showed that so-called multitrait multimethod tests may be able to identify an independent construct of social intelligence. Multitrait multimethod tests consist of tasks or questions that are designed to assess several components of social intelligence. Researchers assess each component using several different methods, such as multiple-choice questions, cartoons, and questions about video scenes.

German researchers Susanne Weis and Heinz-Martin Suess have designed the best-validated test of social intelligence to date [
31
]. Their test combines several different preexisting tests of relevant mental abilities and assesses three major components of social intelligence: social understanding, social memory, and social knowledge. The researchers assess each of these domains using verbal (written questions), pictorial (questions about cartoons), and video-based measures in accordance with the multitrait multimethod design of the test. According to these investigators, social understanding comprises mental abilities that enable a person to understand social situations and intentions of people using both verbal and non-verbal information. They define social memory as the ability to remember social information, such as personal characteristics of people. Their definition of social knowledge is
tacit
knowledge and skills related to social situations, i.e. information that is difficult to recall or explain. The brain stores this type of information in the so-called
procedural memory
. (For example, if you learn how to ride a bike, the brain will store your skills in the procedural memory. In contrast, if you learn several new foreign words, this information will end up in the other type of memory, the so-called
declarative memory
. You can recall and explain this information.)

Drs. Weis and Suess investigated the properties of their social intelligence test on 118 participants, who were first-year psychology students and high-school students [
31
]. Their data show that the results of the test do not correlate with academic intelligence and personality traits. Statistical analysis revealed that the three hypothetical domains of social intelligence—social understanding, social knowledge, and social memory—correlated well among themselves. These data support the existence of a general factor of social intelligence (similar to
g
, the general factor of academic intelligence). This means that social intelligence may be a valid, separate type of intelligence. Some components of the test—the social understanding-pictorial test—did not fit well with the general factor of social intelligence. This observation suggests that there may be some overlap or relationship between social and emotional intelligence, which deserves further research.

Studies by other researchers, who also used the multitrait multimethod approach, pointed to the existence of the crystallized and fluid dimensions of social intelligence. Dr. Jong-Eun Lee and colleagues have shown that the crystallized and fluid components of social intelligence are related (there is a statistical correlation). These data lend support to the existence of the general factor of social intelligence [
28
]. Jong-Eun Lee’s statistical analysis showed that the crystallized domains of social and academic intelligence were not well related to each other. The same was true of the fluid domains of social and academic intelligence, which were also unrelated. These data suggest that a higher-order type of “fluid intelligence” does not exist. You may recall that in Chapter One we defined “mental clarity” as a combination of fluid components of academic, emotional, and social intelligence. The above data suggest that the concept of mental clarity is an artificial construct that does not describe an independent type of intelligence. In other words, mental clarity is a combination of unrelated components.